Cepeda: Young Latinos will be boon to nation if given chance

To give you an idea of just how radically positive these young Latinos are compared with other groups, let’s look at the Harvard Institute of Politics’ most recent national poll of America’s 18- to 29-year-olds.

When asked whether they are “hopeful” or “fearful” about the future of America, 51 percent of all respondents indicated that they are fearful. However, of the whites, blacks and Hispanics who were polled, no group was more fearful about America’s future than white men and women.

Only 36 percent of white males and 32 percent of white females believe they will be better off financially than their parents, compared with 45 percent of Hispanic males and 52 percent of Hispanic females.

I blame this on a decade’s worth of alarmist news headlines about minorities displacing white people as the new majority. Without a doubt, 10 years or so of pitting minorities against white people in a high-stakes game of demography-is-destiny was the impetus for a presidential contest in which making America “great again” was code for making it white again.

Demographer William H. Frey says that the “diversity explosion” that is driving our population growth is a legitimate reason for optimism. (He’s been saying this for many years, but it’s like he’s been shouting it into the wind.) Americans are aging — and a young generation of Hispanics, Asians and multiracial Americans are coming of age just as the largely white, older U.S. population needs people to care for them and to pay in to Social Security.

“The U.S. labor-force-age population is projected to grow more than 5 percent between 2010 and 2030,” wrote Frey in a blog post for the Brookings Institution. “Yet were it not for new minorities, the country’s labor force would decline by 8 percent.”

A net positive

Frey is extremely optimistic that if policies align to adequately support this next generation, the impact will be a net positive. “Some may look at these projections and worry about the increased division in our country. But I think that we’re going to change in the future and be open to racial diversity precisely because of this sharp demographic transformation that we’re undergoing.”

In many ways, the economy is a measure of trust that the future will be better than the present. As Hispanics constitute a bigger portion of the economy, their ironclad faith in the American Dream and their ardent hope to pass a more prosperous life onto their children will be a boon to the nation — and in the midst of the most anti-Hispanic climate of my lifetime.

Imagine the progress and prosperity that could be unleashed through the hopefulness and energy of a young Latino population if the country started seeing them as a benefit, an opportunity, and a means for making America better, rather than as an invading force that needs to be guarded against.

Esther Cepeda is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Email: estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Twitter: @estherjcepeda.